there’s a big difference between “i’m sad because a character i was emotionally invested in was killed off” and “this character’s death served no purpose, was used for shock value, and is the product of bad writing and i’m upset about that”
they’ve both been though a lot actually–the difference is in the way they respond to it. loki is definitely the more emotional of the two and tends to wear his heart on his sleeve. when he is faced with something like his true parentage, his response is passionate and violent, bordering on unhinged. it’s so obvious, through his expressions and his actions, that the revelation absolutely crushed him. thor is such a positive personality that when life-shattering events happen he is still able to move forward with a smile on his face, even if he may be hurting inside, perfectly exemplified when thanos kills half his people, his brother, and his best friend and and hour later thor is taking on the full force of a star to forge a weapon that will kill the bastard. in that way, i think people tend to focus more on loki’s pain because he expresses it so freely and–dare i say–dramatically at times. i believe we don’t often get to see the depth of thor’s anguish because he hides it so well, because he know he has to be strong in order to fight and be a hero. say you had two children and both of them got hurt somehow. who would you go to first? the one who is crying and begging for help or the one who stands back and takes care of the injury himself? i mean, i can see where you’re coming from even if i don’t agree. just because the fandom seems to focus more on loki’s pain doesn’t lessen all that thor has been through, and i’m not trying to downplay either of their struggles. i just think it’s human tendency to look towards the person who screams the loudest.
I think the difference is that Thor is not mentally ill and has always had a solid support system. You know he’ll get through it and be alright, because he’s mentally healthy and there’s always been and always will be people on his side willing to listen and help. Loki doesn’t have that. Has never had that, in all likelihood. Even before his fall, the person closest to him, arguably his mother, was concerned primarily with defending Odin’s choices, his brother was too self absorbed to care about anybody overmuch (I’m not just putting down Thor, this was his characterization before his exile), his friends were really Thor’s friends and willing to betray him with zero actual evidence of wrong doing… and when he came back, having last been seen in the midst of a psychotic break that ended in attempted suicide, his brother literally greets him with violence, asks him just once who was controlling him, then drops the subject and as far as we can tell, no one bothers to again. Then he’s put in solitary for a year, his father and brother don’t visit at all, and his mother is again primarily concerned with defending Odin’s bad decisions. His family doesn’t bother to tell him themselves when his mother dies or allow him to attend her funeral. Thor, upon seeing his grief, refuses to even tell Loki how she died. And so it goes.
Yes, Thor has suffered many trials, and deserves sympathy for them, but he’s never been so alone in them as Loki has, under the weight of mental illness and with not one soul close to him willing to simply listen and be there without judgement or demand.
MCU Loki may have his roots based on the Comics Loki but, right from the beginning he went a different path.
That’s what I’m always saying. Praise your words. But there’ll always be many people pissed about MCU Loki not being exactly like the other two versions. The hardest is they mix their connections with actual canon stuff and mock you for not acknowledging it. MCU Loki is inspired by the comics and Norse Mythology – not an exact copy of them.
Okay this face makes me want to rant. People joke constantly about how Loki was lying to Thor about everything, even the fact that he loves his brother, because he always thirsted for the throne. Aside the fact that he SAID “I never wanted the throne, I only ever wanted to be your equal" to Thor in the heat of candid emotion, look at this face.
He makes this face WHEN NO ONE IS LOOKING.
WHEN NO ONE IS LOOKING.
WHEN NO ONE IS LOOKING.
It is in EARNEST. When the audience sees Loki making faces in moments like THIS, be they evil faces or sad faces, the writer and director are using a rhetorical device called DRAMATIC IRONY: the audience has insight into character feelings, motives, and actions that no other character has. There are three moments of Dramatic Irony in Thor:
1) When Loki facepalms at Thor wanting to go to Jotunheim and succeeding in convincing the Warriors 3 to join him.
2) THIS moment, in this gif, and also when Thor is cast out and Loki reacts behind Odin’s back in shock and hurt—as well as in nervous vigilance when Mjolnir is cast out as well.
3) Much later, after things have escalated, when Loki lies to Thor that Odin is dead, turns away, and we see him smirking triumphantly that Thor has bought the lie.
ERGO:
—Loki did not plan for it to go this far.
—Loki is contrite that it went this far.
—Loki is also unwilling to stop its trajectory (although he DOES try once, before Odin silences him).
Almost anything else about events leading up to this is arguable, except that Loki a) loves Thor, b) is jealous of Thor, c) is conflicted about his own role in the family dynamic. And he did NOT want Thor banished. And he DID NOT anticipate that Odin would banish Thor. He just wanted Thor DISCREDITED as a leader to Odin so that Loki would have the time to prove HIMSELF a worthy heir (even though, as he himself SAID, it wasn’t even a title he ultimately wanted).
I find that people constantly argue that Loki planned for everything that happened to Thor in the first half of the movie. I deeply believe that this is inaccurate. I believe that Loki was an excellent deceiver but that his Achilles’s Heel has ALWAYS been to get in over his head. He thought the three Jotun guards would mess up Thor’s coronation. He thought Thor and Odin would argue and Odin would berate Thor for being “arrogant and reckless" (Loki’s words). He did not care about Aesir collateral, although he didn’t anticipate that either (because he thought Odin would get there faster, and didn’t realize Odin was tired and headed for an Odinsleep). And that’s it. He DIDN’T expect Thor to ever REACH Jotunheim (again, he overestimated Odin’s capacity to come stop them when he tipped off the guard), and I even argue he didn’t want Thor to even TRY (because he already got what he wanted, Odin is already furious at Thor, and also, because Loki facepalms, again, when NO ONE IS LOOKING, in EXASPERATION, he doesn’t triumphantly smirk the way he does after he’s lied to Thor that Odin is dead). And when they got there, and battled, and Fandral was wounded, and Odin took them all home, he DIDN’T expect Odin to banish Thor OR to cast Mjolnir out with him. THEN it happened. THEN the confession of Loki’s Jotun heritage happened. THEN Loki decided he’d go after Mjolnir and keep Thor exiled indefinitely. THEN Sif and the W3 disobeyed his mandate. THEN Loki panicked and sent the Destroyer to kill Thor. You see how things were not entirely planned out to the last detail, or rather they were, but anytime something on the chessboard shifted, so did Loki? Things snowballed.
People need to remember two facts:
a) Loki gets in over his head, because he’s playful and likes the thrill of danger.
b) Loki changes his plans 180 degrees with every new contingency. He is resourceful and capricious.
tumblr discourse has truly taken away the right to subjective opinions and its exhausting
like now instead of saying “i like this tv show because it is entertaining and engaging” you have to come up with totally ridiculous reasons as to why this random television show on like, the CW or something is Actually the paradigm of feminist media even when it isnt at all
instead of saying “this celebrity is obnoxious and overrated and annoying” you get people searching meticulously through their twitter or interviews in order to find something incriminating enough to end up on a yfip list, and now you can pretend that your reasons for disliking this celebrity arent entirely personal and have some kind of Righteous Cause backing it
you dont need to put politics into everything you love and you dont need to bend over backwards trying to explain why this Thing you love is Actually Totally Political. you are allowed to subjectively enjoy things. conversely you can hate looking at a celebrity’s dumb face without acting like theres always some kind of social justice reason fueling it
It’s not unreasonable to ask people to tag a post that depicts a graphic strangulation. It’s true you can’t possibly avoid ALL of these posts. But when I come across one with NO tags, I have the right to call attention to it. Because it means you didn’t even bother.
Before Infinity War was released, I tagged the fuck out of my spoiler posts. Why? Because I acknowledge that not everyone wants to see that stuff. When I realized that some people did not like my Ragnarok criticisms, I began tagging the posts so that they could avoid seeing them, if they wanted. Because I actually take responsibility for the shit that I post.
Your blog is yours, yes. But it isn’t a private diary. The things you post on here are accessible to the public. Other people see them. If you are old enough to use this site, you are old enough to understand that the things you post can affect others and that you are responsible for them.
If someone asks you to tag your Loki strangulation posts, instead of focusing on whether they did so in a way that you found acceptable, just recognize that your untagged post probably upset that person (and rightly so) and take steps to correct your mistake. Do not complain about it. Do not play the victim. In a perfect world, we wouldn’t need to tag things at all. But we don’t live in a perfect world. Just tag your post and move on.
I understand the poster is making a joke, but this bugs me. From what I understand, combat with a knife or dagger is similar to a rapier. There is a lot of thrusting, parrying and feigning involved. More importantly it requires allowing your enemy to get close. Those who choose this weapon understand they will probably get cut during a fight. So you have to be confident and courageous when choosing this style. It says a lot about Loki then. He went with a technical, challenging and unpredictable option. Seems to me he has a right to be proud.
Hey folks, I’ve already said I’m done discussing my opinions on what constitutes fetishizing gay men. I will not respond to any further anons on the subject, however you’re welcome to message me privately off anon if you’d like to discuss it. But let me make one thing very clear: My opinion on this does not matter.
If you’re concerned, talk to gay men in fandom. Ask them what they find uncomfortable, and then avoid using those things in your own writing. Going around asking female writers their opinions is more likely to cause fights than to enact positive change.
Hi, fandom gay man here! At the risk of putting my foot in it, there’s always two things that jump out at me when I see an author receiving asks or comments about whether they’re objectifying gay men by writing slash fic.
1. Despite having written porn in the past that involves women, gay guy me has never received an ask or comment about whether I am objectifying women. It’s more than possible that these asks and comments concerned about the objectification of women occur within fandom and I have simply never seen them, but I have seen loads of “aren’t you worried about objectifying gay men?” in fandom (typically directed at women and nb peeps). Just something to think about.
2.
When writers of queer fiction are prodded with concerns of “but what if you’re objectifying them?” the desired result of the prodder seems to be to get that writer to stop writing queer fiction. Which results in consumers of queer fiction (which certainly includes the people the prodder states they want to defend) ending up with less content.
Fewer things to read. Fewer pieces of fiction that depict us as normal, as being loved, as deserving love. Fewer pieces of fiction where we might even discover ourselves for the first time.
Fewer writers who are putting themselves in our shoes. Fewer writers willing to even try, if they’re too afraid of the backlash. Fewer writers making mistakes and thus learning and growing from those mistakes.
And sometimes, after a day of being closeted at work by direct order of my boss, sometimes I really just want to read a story about some of my favorite characters being gay or queer men like me, maybe even in an AU where they have a job like mine–and the more people who are discouraged due to the fear of making mistakes, the less material there will be out there that tells us that we are normal people deserving of having stories about us.
Loki is the Philosopher King 